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Friday, May 11, 2012

I'm frantically trying to make Guadalupe Ridge for my Puebla playtest on Wednesday night. I have all the figures ready and just need to create this large peice of terrain.

Guadalupe Ridge was the target of the French assaults on Puebla in 1862 (they learned their lesson and left them alone in the siege of 1863). This will be a large piece of gaming terrain with two fortifications crowning the heights.

My first attempt to create the ridge failed as I had originally settled on a 2' x 3' footprint for the ridge, but once I drew the fortresses on the ridge line the sloops were going to have to be too steep, so I have gone to 3' x 4' pink board.

My table at historicon will be roughly 5' x 10' so the ridge will dominate half the table.

Found the following maps of the forts at the time of the battle so this gives me a rough outline of the fortresses.

Fort Loreto

Fort Guadalupe with an Abbey inside it.

I blew up the fort jpgs to make a template to trace onto the pink board. The ground to the left of Fort Loreto and to the right if Fort Guadalupe are going to be steep rough (Class IV in game terms) ground.

#1 – template with walls. Discovered how to bend foamcore!

#2 – Adding gun and troop walkways.

#3 – French assault

#4 – Good shot of Loreto and Guadalupe in the background.
Ridge is not cut out yet.

#5 – Charges!

#6 - Made gates that can be removed if needed. Made a similar one on Guadalupe. Also filled in the gaps on both forts with wood filler.

Showing the template of Fort Guadalupe from the map above, which is blown up to scale.

Walls done with Musket Minatures Mexican American War Church (which will be the Abbey)

Good shot of defending Mexican forces!

Guadalupe Ridge in the process of being carved out. Fortresses are not painted in a black base coat. Still have tons of work to do on this, but I wanted to share.

This has taken a lot of research, but well worth the effort! Historicon will be a blast!

Bending foamcore requires you to score the side of the foamcore that will be on the inside of the bend. So for each turret of Loreto I just scored, with an exacto knife, the interior wall side, then bent it into place. Glad you like the post! Can't wait to put this monster on the table.

About the Dictator

Benevolent Dictator of the Charlotte Garrison wargaming club and chieftan of the Burgess Clan.
EMAIL: EBurgess@Carolina.rr.com
Wargaming with miniatures (and rules) since about 1989. Playing with toy soldiers since 1970.
Miniature Wargame Rules Written by me: Guns of Liberty (AWI), Barrage (Piquet), Archon 2nd edition (Piquet), Din of Battle 2nd edition (Piquet), and Death in the Desert (FFL)